“I enjoyed the eyes”. “Ephemeral” begins with a documentary on the screen of Pleyel and a slice of laughter in the crowded room. We return to April 2022 where Grand Corps Malade Gael Faye and Ben Mazué meet for a week at La Fabrique studio in the South to try to create songs together. Each appearance is greeted with cries of love from their fans.
For fifteen minutes, we relive their creation in the studio, their doubts, their strokes of genius – such as telling the story of the kidnapping of Benjamin Biolay and the theft of his Victory – and we hear the birth of the seven songs that will form their album “Ephemeral”. A bet, a success. Released in September 2022, it sold 70,000 copies. Two nominations for Victoires de la Musique but still no trophies for the trio.
Their concerts are also intended to be ephemeral. Only three appointments at the Salle Pleyel. 6,500 tickets sold in a few hours. No tour planned, the three artists being taken up by other projects, a film, a novel… a dog! For those who have not found a place, there will be a catch-up session on March 16 in more than 200 cinemas in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. In Paris, people come from all over the country for this premiere. At 8:30 p.m., the screen rises to eight musicians, including a brass section. Guillaume Poncelet on the piano and Ben Mazué on the guitar launch “Need for Nothing”, Quentin Mosimann joins his keyboards by raising the atmosphere. Huge acclamation when Grand Corps Malade and Gael Faye arrive. This rhythm’n’blues title is perfect to warm up the room. “We don’t need anything. But to continue Pleyel we need you, ”says Grand Corps Malade.
No need to add more. Pleyel is up and boiling for “Carve the road” and “I took the time”, the next two. “But good with our seven songs, we are already halfway through the concert, they recognize during the first break. So we thought it might be a good idea to make texts from our own repertoires. “And we mixed our musicians,” adds Ben Mazué. It is the latter who sticks to it first, under the gaze of his two friends, seated on the side of the room, behind a bistro table and a beer. Gael Faye “sways the room”, Grand Corps Malade makes it jump with an energetic version of “I put words”. Faye and Mazué leave their “café terrace” to jump too.
An evidence: the spectators know their titles as well in solo as in trio. They continue with their romantic songs. “You are the Federer of the love song,” says Grand Corps Malade to Ben Mazué. But when it comes to dancing, the first is more reserved on the second: “In 90% of your songs you talk about mourning and divorce”. So it’s Gael Faye who releases his hit “Boomer” in a brilliant electro zouk version: “Gigotez, gigotez”. Pleyel is on fire, Ben Mazué brings spectators up on stage, Gael Faye dives into the pit to dance. Sacred performer! The emotional lift starts again with “Mesdames”, the tribute of the slammer from Saint-Denis to women sublimated by the choirs of Mosimann, “Quand je marche”, direct to the heart of Mazué which makes Pleyel vibrate with a rare intensity and “Qui kidnapped Benjamin Biolay? »
In front of a screen where cartoons of the kidnapping follow one another and their lines are written in real time, as if for a dubbing, the trio raises the sound and continues with “La cause”, a magnificent song built around the sample of the melody of “The superb” of Biolay, before concluding with six titles in reminders. Each chose to cover a song from the other, Grand Corps. Malade thrills Mazué’s “Tu m’auras so much”, they share a duet “Behind the fog” and finally a trio of two final tracks from their album, the eponymous and sweet “Ephemeral” and “We took the time” redone for fun in voice guitar, lights on. “No song changes the world” says Gael Faye in “The cause”. It is discussed. But what is indisputable, after two and a quarter hours of show, is that we like their company. And we hope that their collaboration will not remain… ephemeral.